Culture is the Solution: The Civilizing Mission of Egypts Culture Palaces

Jessica Winegar Northwestern University

ince the early 1990s, the Egyptian government has devoted signicant resources to new culture projects. Unprecedented numbers of new cultural institutions have been built or renovated throughout the country, including libraries, museums, culture palaces and houses, and creativity centers. These host thousands of public programs every year. The government has also started two new television channels devoted specically to culture (thaqafa).1 Book fairs and art biennials have increased in number and expanded, new cultural periodicals and book series have been published, and new cultural competitions and prizes created. Nearly every day in the state press, one nds articles and announcements detailing cultural events and programs, as well as editorials on the importance of thaqafa to Egyptian society. The strong interest in culture projects emanates from the Presidential Palace itself, with the appointment of new Minister of Culture Faruq Husni (1987) and the creation of the Cultural Development Fund by Presidential Decree (1989); with the Presidents continued support of the culture minister despite his run-ins with the states religious establishment, Islamist activists, and intellectuals of all stripes; and with First Lady Suzanne Mubaraks huge literacy initiatives in the form of new book series, fairs, and libraries.2 The Ministry of Culture and the Supreme Council of Culture run the majority of these culture projects, but the Ministries of Information, Education, and Youth and Sport are also involved. 189

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This massive increase in monetary, institutional, and discursive focus on culture in the Mubarak period coincides with the spread of the piety movement and Islamic activism. Indeed, the heavy emphasis on culture by the Egyptian government (and secular intellectual discourse) can be directly traced to the early 1990s, when Islamist groups launched violent attacks against intellectuals, government gures, and Western tourists, and when the new forms of public piety became impossible to ignore as a passing trend. It is clear that thaqafaas dened in particular ways and created through certain government institutions and discourseshas become an important feature of state projects to manage Islamic practice and identications.3 Among self-described cultured persons (muthaqqan) in the upper echelons of government institutions, many of whom are also self-dened secularists (ilmaniyyin), the goal is to create national subjects committed to national high culture. In this conguration, Islam is presented as only one component among many of that national high culture, and Islamic practice becomes the object of tathqif, or the process of making cultured. Tathqif also contains notions of cultural uplift, cultivation, training, or education, and is linked to the concept of gaining taste (tadhawwuq). Whereas Islamic activists, including the Muslim Brotherhood in recent elections, have posed Islam as the solution, for many state-afliated intellectuals culture is their preferred solution. This modernist project of civilizing Islamic practice and interpretation is found throughout different institutions in the state cultural apparatus.4 Here I focus on its appearance in the culture palaces (qusur thaqafa) initiative, because it is one of the key initiatives meant to target those seen by urban intellectual elites as in need of civilized national culture: lower class residents of large cities and provincial towns, rural people, women, youth, and children. Although the Mubarak government has overseen the building of over eighty new culture palaces and the renovation of many others, the culture palace project dates back to the Nasser period.5 In tracking the culture palace discourses from that period to the present, we can see continuities in how top planners envision culture palaces as inculcating a notion of national high culture that draws on European Enlightenment and socialist development formulations. But we can also see a shift. Whereas in the 1950s and 1960s the focus was on raising the cultural level of workers and peasants in the interest of social equality and development (al-adala/ al-tanmiya al-ijtimaiyya), in the Mubarak period many culture workers argue that cultural levels must be raised in order to ght religious ignorance and extremism. What is at stake for them is their power to determine the future of the Egyptian nation. 190

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In 1958, the Ministry of National Guidance became the Ministry of Culture and National Guidance, a shift that reveals the importance as well as the understanding of culture in the postcolonial state. One of the rst initiatives of the new ministry was to build fteen culture palaces in the major cities and towns of the country, and to establish fteen cultural caravans (qawal al-thaqafa) to travel to areas not serviced by a palace. To build a new Egyptian nation, Ministry ofcials argued, one needed not only technological and bureaucratic modernization, but also cultural modernization, meaning modern cultural institutions and culture employees to guide the new nation with the steering wheel of culture, and to raise the cultural level of workers and peasants by guiding them into modern national culture. These groups were described as in need of tathqif because they were illiterate and supposedly unproductive in their use of time, lacking a sense of collective national responsibility, and prone to dishonesty and superstition. The lm, theater, music, ne arts, reading, and lecture programs were meant to x these problems, as well as to employ Egyptian artists and encourage the production of national cultural forms more generally. State institutions instantiated thaqafa with the goal of creating modern citizens adaptable to new technological and bureaucratic regimes, with a range of cultural knowledge and capabilities. Culture came to be an established eld of modern governance, increasingly dened not just as knowledge of reading and writing (the common connotation of thaqafa), but also as a knowledge of the arts more broadly, and as a set of cultural sensibilities that reect and engender a civilized national subject. In this period, then, Enlightenment and bourgeois values were mixed with socialist development ideology to render the culture concept a means of both leveling and creating social distinctions.6

Tathqif in Nasser Era Culture Palaces

The New Culture Palaces

In 1989, the culture palaces were given higher administrative prole through the creation of the General Organization of Culture Palaces (GOCP). With a bigger mandate and budget to construct (but not necessarily adequately run), the GOCP embarked on a major plan to build hundreds of cultural palaces (and their smaller versions, culture houses) throughout Egypt, and to expand their programs. Thousands of employees run thousands of programs in the completed branches of the GOCP every year. By 2006, the GOCP budget was being planned at nearly four million Egyptian pounds a year.7 The majority of the programs are conceived in Cairo, and as such often reect a northern urban elite view of what should constitute culture. 191

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Featured events in culture palaces reveal enduring denitions of literate, national, high, and technologically modern thaqafa at play: literary readings of works by Egyptian writers; folk dance and music performances; performances of the Egyptian theater classics; recitals of classical Arabic music and choral singing; displays of ne art; and conferences, lectures, and workshops on various arts as well as on technology and information. But we also nd increasingly more elaborate Ramadan program scheduling as well as celebrations of the Prophets birthday, programs featuring Su singers, and lectures given by state-sanctioned shaykhs on the fundamentals of religion. Not only does religion occupy an explicit category in culture palace programming, but it has also become a key problem in cultural discourse produced in and by culture palaces. In 1990, ofcials committed the GOCP to regularly publishing a periodical entitled The New Culture (al-Thaqafa al-Jadida).8 Ostensibly a platform to encourage writers from the provinces, the journal covers the activities, goals, and challenges of the culture palaces, other cultural activities (such as the International Cairo Book Fair), and what are called Egypts cultural crises. Like much state and secularist discourse in Egypt, this periodical assumes a need for more thaqafa in Egypt. In the press, in interviews, in public conferences, and in casual conversation, Ministry of Culture ofcials and secular intellectuals bemoan, often in tones of exasperation and lament, what they see as the loss of Egyptian cultural identity and a declining level of culturedness. This loss and decline is frequently seen as both cause and effect of the growth of the Islamic revival. Any number of aspects of the revival can be perceived as objectionable and lacking in culture.9 Some common examples include the increase in visual and/or aural markers of piety, the platform of the Muslim Brotherhood, the actions of al-Qaida or the Jamaat Islamiyya, the lessons of Islamic television preachers, or the views and actions of religious family members, neighbors, or colleagues. These phenomena are described as resulting from a loss or decline of culture, due to causes such as the inux of Western commodities and media with globalization and economic liberalization, the poor management of contemporary cultural institutions, and the defunding of cultural institutions in the Sadat era. Put simply, the loss or decline of a strong national Egyptian identity is understood to lead to a problematic rise in religious activity. But the rise in religious activity is also frequently presented as a cause of Egyptian national culture loss. In this opposite argument, people are becoming attracted to misguided notions of Islam often through transnational media and migration, and thus are losing their true national identity as Egyptians. Culture ofcials and writers share an anxious sense that they have lost control of the 192

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public sphere, and a determination to ght a transnational Islamic threat with cultural institutions and programs.

Culture: A Light Upon the Nation

The view that more culture is needed to ght wayward religion is so dominant among state ofcials and among intellectuals generally that it is rare to nd a critique of the states culture project outside of its terms. In 1997, the Ministry of Culture published a glossy book detailing the achievements of the previous decade, and claiming that the state is a primary source of culture in Egypt. Entitled Culture: A Light Upon the Nation, the book places culture palaces in the Ministrys larger project to raise the culture of Egyptians and to draw positive attention to Egypt through its programs. Even many critics of the government believe it is the states job to provide the infrastructure of cultural enlightenment, which will be led by themselves, the true intellectuals. Criticisms of the culture palaces usually stress that they are underfunded, mismanaged, or corrupt, not that they should be abandoned. Outside critics and culture palace employees both argue that the culture palaces fail in their mission because of the lack of culture or religious extremism of some employees and of the general population. The language of light Culture and dark Islamism abounds. In the Mubarak period, culture palace ofcials still frame ignorance as resulting from illiteracy, but dishonesty and superstition are now more explicitly and regularly linked to Islam through the use of words such as reactionary, darkness, stagnation, closedness, and misunderstanding. In many discussions based on the idea of a cultural crisis, aspects of the Islamic Revival are lumped together and contrasted with notions of light, progress, development, awareness, correct understanding, openness, and taste. Culture palace ofcials still frame culture as a tool of social development and modernization in the same language as Nasser-era socialist discourse on culture. Culture is trusted with making people value work and time and therefore with creating a productive society.10 A former event organizer at a provincial culture palace told me, We were into social equality and freedom. We thought that art could change people. Change them from what? I asked. He used metaphors of darkness and closure to describe the society whose blockade must be taken apart in the project of building another society. The culture palaces still embody European Enlightenment notions of high culture, often in their very European neoclassical architecture. The programs of culture palaces mainly (though not exclusively) feature the high culture of ne arts and literature. Ministry of Culture ofcials and 193

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their afliated intellectuals not only hope that exposure to this high culture will bring people out of darkness and ignorance, but will induce them to quit distasteful behavior, to become more cultured. Examples used as evidence of ignorance and distasteful behavior cover a range of bodily and consumption practices, showing the link between notions of culture and the different senses. The following examples are often conceptually lumped together and sometimes rattled off as lists that increasingly include religious elements: littering, driving without taste (dhawq), arguing loudly in the streets, using violence instead of logical conversation (applies equally to street criminals and Islamist groups), increase in wearing the hijab (especially) and Islamic dress more generally (mens Islamic dress often described as bad Sala or Gulf taste), the volume and style of sermons and the call to prayer (especially the dawn call to prayer), beard growing, popular, cheap, and non-scholarly books (al-kutub al-safra, especially those seen to present Islam as a restrictive or violent religion), and even the use of the natural twig toothbrush (siwak) in the tradition of the Prophet. These examples, in the context of discourses on the importance of culture palace programs, suggest that national high culture is increasingly meant to regulate religious thought and behavior according to a certain Cairene classbased aesthetics as it intersects with an important state political agenda. Thus, although much of the programmatic content of the culture palaces and the language used to discuss cultures role shows the continued inuence of both socialist and European Enlightenment notions of culture, these are now frequently constituted in reference to religion as a problem of both thought and behavior. This becomes clear when we consider the new discourse of culture that has combined with the older ones: that of culture as a weapon or a front in a war against religious ignorance and extremism (tatarruf). A frequent writer to al-Thaqafa al-Jadida, reporting on the Presidents appearance at the International Cairo Book Fair, says that he came to participate in a discussion of the ramications of September 11th, because culture is one of our important weapons in facing them.11 In the press and casual discussions alike, culture is called an effective weapon against ignorance and backwardness that is frequently associated with wrong interpretations of Islam. This culture as a weapon discourse is very similar to that used by the U.S. government during the Cold War, and during President Bushs public diplomacy in the Middle East. At some level, its appearance in Egypt at this time is likely related to the strategic alliance between the governments of Egypt and the U.S. against political Islam. Culture palaces in particular are framed as a key weapon against religious ignorance and extremism because they are the main (or only) cultural institutions in areas perceived to be in need of enlightenment: working 194

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class areas of cities, and towns and villages throughout the countryside, especially in areas of the south which have seen sectarian violence and Islamist activity since the mid-1980s.

Examining the content and form of culture palace activities shows how state ofcials redirect and reformulate the culture concept in relation to their view of the correct place of Islam in the national project. In the culture palace presentation of a combined national and high culture, certain denitions and practices associated with religion are selected, while others are rejected. Those that are selected are subject to tathqif, and, one could argue, to nationalization and secularization as well. First, religious eventsand indeed all culture palace activitiesare stripped of oppositional political content through surveillance and bureaucratization. Many culture palaces have been built near local police or state security force headquarters (and vice-versa). Any stirrings of protest against government ofcials or policies are immediately quelled, either through force or, more typically, by the threat or perceived threat of force. As a culture palace event organizer once said, everyone knows that the number for state security is at the top of the phone list of any culture palace director. In rural areas, the town mayor, police chief, and other powerful gures are always invited to events and often come. On a more mundane but no less signicant level, religious events are entered into bureaucratic forms and schedules alongside other events at the culture palaces. These schedules, along with permission and funding procedures, circumscribe the timing and scope of these events. State monitored and trained shaykhs are hired into the bureaucracy to instruct people in Islamic practice that is both state-sanctioned and viewed as cultured. These are typically on restricted topics such as how to calculate alms and perform the hajj. Religion is also subjected to tathqif through turning religious practices and objects into aesthetic objects to be contemplated. Crafts drawing on historical Islamic visual traditions are hung on walls or placed on pedestals. At Ramadan music and dance performances, everyone sits in chairs and watches, just as they do at literary readings or plays. Audiences are meant to show appreciation by seated applause, typically at what is judged the end of a segment of performance. Ramadan performances often feature music and dance categorized as folklore, a category framed as national more than religious. Sometimes culture palaces feature programs of Su lyrical recitation (inshad), but again audience members sit in chairs and are expected to applaud, rather than sway their bodies in Su dhikr. 195

Tathqif and Islam

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Finally, religion is subject to tathqif through its compartmentalization as one component, typically presented as historical, among many components that make up national culture. Egyptian national culture is programmatically created as composed of the high literary and ne arts, and technology, alongside folk dance, folk music, and Islamic arts. Ramadan schedules mix explicitly religious events with others that are not framed as such. Culture palace ofcials and secularist intellectuals typically select historically oriented crafts and Su expressive genres as the acceptable religious arts, and Su genres are often subsumed under folklore. Thus, in the composition of culture palace programming, and in the selection of religious programs, we see the subsidiary place of Islam in the larger architecture of national high culture. Clearly, Egyptian Ministry of Culture ofcials and secularist intellectuals have decided that the rise in public piety and religious activism require them to instrumentalize culture in order to civilize certain Egyptians, and Islamic religious practice in particular. This does not mean that they seek to erase Islam, in part because some of these people are themselves religious, but also in part becausesince before the Nasser periodculture projects have used religion as a gateway to cultural uplift (the people to be uplifted being prone to respond more easily to religious discourses). Elites seek to train Egyptians in what they see as enlightened Islam: interpretations and practices that do not challenge their privilege, their ideology of the good society, or the states aim to create national citizen-subjects. Most program ofcials and state intellectuals believe that Egypt is the cultural center of the Middle East, and view their project as having region-wide signicance in developing Arab society and thwarting backwardness, the most threatening form of which comes in what many call the name of Islam, but not the true Islam. Over the past two decades especially, Arab governments have faced serious challenges to their modernization projects and to their legitimacy from religious parties and social movements. They have employed a variety of repressive measures to control religious activity and determine its meaning. I hope that this essay will direct attention to the perhaps more subtle, but no less important, role that culture concepts play in this political struggle.

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End Notes
1 2

The Nile Cultural Channel and Enlightenment (Tanwir) Television.

For more on the ghts between the Ministry of Culture and intellectuals, see Samia Mehrez, Egypts Culture Wars: Politics and Practice (London: Routledge, 2008). The unprecedented spending on culture also coincides with Mubarak era neoliberal economic restructuring, a connection I explored in Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). Mona Abaza offers an important and detailed critique of government and secularist enlightenment discourses in The Trafficking with Tanwir (Enlightenment), forthcoming in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. For more on this process in visual arts institutions, including state arts colleges, see Winegar, ibid. Gregory Starrett also analyzes state attempts to manage Islam in the eld of education more broadly in Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). See also Samuli Schielkes study of state civilizing missions towards Su practice in Egypt in Policing Ambiguity: Muslim Saints-Day Festivals and the Moral Geography of Public Space in Egypt, American Ethnologist 35(4):539-552, 2008.
5 Two newly published works include analyses of elite uses of culture concepts before the Nasser period, uses that continue to this day: Omnia El Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007) and Michael Gasper, The Power of Representation: Publics, Peasants, and Islam in Egypt (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009). Both private and public institutional cultural education and uplift programs pre-date the Nasser era. The immediate precursor to the Culture Palaces was the Popular University (al-jama al-shabiyya), a combination of government educational programs founded in the 1940s. 6 Two main sources for the public culture programs from the Nasser period forward are Mahmud Said Mahmud, Khamsun amman min al-thaqafa al-jamahiriyya (Cairo: Al-haya al-amma lil-qusur al-thaqafa, 2005), and Fuada Al-Bakri, Al-tanmiya al-thaqayya wa al thaqafa al-jamahiriyya. (Cairo: Maktabat al-Shabab, 1992). 7 Khatwa ala al-tariq: khitat al-anshita al-thaqayya wa al-fanniyya li-amm 2006-2007 (Egyptian Ministry of Culture: The General Organization of Culture Palaces). 4 3

Since its inception in 1970, its publication had stalled on several occasions, likely due to defunding in the Sadat period. Many state culture workers are believers, and some practice religion actively, even though they might advocate the state cultural institutions approach to religion. In fact, they often see the states approach to religion as preferred, from a religious point of view. Sami Khashaba, Ann kalimat al-rais Mubarak wa dawr al-thaqafa almisriyya, al-Thaqafa al-Jadida 153:4-6, February 2003.
11 Yusri Hassan, Asila al-lahza al-rahina, al-Thaqafa al-Jadida 153:8-12, February 2003. 10 9

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